Military Families Cutting Back on Thanksgiving This Year

Editor's note: The following analysis comes from a Financial Behaviors Index release.

Military families are putting their Thanksgiving celebrations on a diet again this year, continuing a frugal trend fueled by the economic downturn.

Recent survey findings from the First Command Financial Behaviors Index reveal that half of middle-class military families (senior NCOs and commissioned officers in pay grades E-6 and above with household incomes of at least $50,000) are changing their Thanksgiving plans this year as a result of the economy. Active duty families will be cutting back in a variety of ways, including:

• Reducing travel (26 percent)
• Dining with immediate family members only (22 percent)
• Spending less on food (16 percent)
• Spending less on decorations (13 percent)
• Sticking to a set budget (12 percent)

Roughly half of middle-class families in the general population also expect to cut back for Thanksgiving, and they’ll be relying on the same cost-cutting behaviors targeted by military households. The biggest difference in frugal strategies appears to be in travel plans. Reducing travel is a cost-cutting plan for 26 percent of military families versus 18 percent of families in the general population. And among those families planning to reduce travel, military consumers are much more likely to stay home (56 percent versus 39 percent in the general population).

“The economic turmoil of recent years has changed the way middle-class Americans celebrate Thanksgiving,” said Scott Spiker, CEO of First Command Financial Services, Inc. “Perhaps the biggest change is that the holiday is becoming a more family-oriented event. Half of men and women in uniform who plan to dine only with immediate family members have done so for at least three years. The trend runs even deeper in the general population, where almost two thirds of consumers have made dining with immediate family their new tradition. The result is an intimate, closer-to-home Thanksgiving celebration.”